Dateline: date rape: UVA gets national coverage

The issue of date rape on college campuses made national news on Sunday, December 11, as NBC's newszine Dateline covered the issue– and featured UVA student Annie Hylton telling her story of sexual assault.

"It was disgusting," Hylton said of UVA's response to her alleged attack. Particularly offensive, she explained to NBC's Hoda Kotb, is the fact that cheating on a test means automatic expulsion thanks to UVA's venerable honor code, but no one has ever been expelled from the school for sexual assault.

Hylton first publicly told her story in the Hook's November 11, 2004 cover story, "How UVA turns its back on rape." She alleged that a fellow student, Matthew Hamilton, had raped her in December 2001 when she was an 18-year-old first-year and he was a 21-year-old third-year.

While UVA's sexual assault board found in Hylton's favor, UVA allowed Hamilton to complete his degree provided he stay away from Hylton. As with many cases of alleged date rape, the physical evidence was scant, and Charlottesville's Commonwealth's Attorney declined to take her case.

Hylton later sued Hamilton for $1.5 million. At the end of August 2005, a Charlottesville jury– while rejecting the notion that Hamilton had raped Hylton– nonetheless found Hamilton "negligent" and awarded Hylton $150,000. Hamilton is currently appealing that decision.

Hylton could not be reached for comment on the Dateline piece, but Susan Russell, the mother of a former UVA student who transferred from the school following a sexual assault, says she thinks the show "was a good piece that scratched the surface, but it didn't get into the depths of the problem.

"Why do universities handle this crime as an administrative process as opposed to a criminal process?" asks Russell, who launched the website uvavictimsofrape.com in March 2004, a month after her daughter's assault.

Although Russell feels the Dateline piece wasn't hard enough on school administrations including UVA's– school representatives say the piece didn't do them any favors.

UVA spokesperson Carol Wood expresses frustration that a Dateline reporter declined the chance to talk to a university administrator to hear specifics about UVA's new sexual assault policies.